Direct current stimulation of endothelial monolayers induces a transient and reversible increase in transport due to the electroosmotic effect – This suggests tDCS (when effective) induces the changes in RNA expression by modifying the cellular osmotic pumps, rather than more directly modifying the transcription/translation process. This feels more correct than the model’s assumption of directly adding more energy to the methylation process, so I need to follow this more.
Effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on brain cytokine levels in rats – Rat skulls are a lot thinner (as are cell sizes themselves), thus the difference in current.
Home-based transcranial direct current stimulation in dual active treatments for symptoms of depression and anxiety: A case series – Frankly, these are absurdly encouraging results even though it’s a cohort, and consistent with results I’ve observed with a similar sized cohort (sans anxiety stuff which we weren’t testing for). I love early cohort stuff like this because it allows more flexibility in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. My favorite part of this work is that they reported on a granular level the differences between the scales themselves, which gives us an idea of the “fuzz” between them so we can normalize it.
TDCS at home for depressive disorders: an updated systematic review and lessons learned from a prematurely terminated randomized controlled pilot study – AND THEY DID A POSTMORTEM. IMO the real lesson here is people are “addicts”, and a little bit of a “good thing” pushes people to want a lot of a “good thing”, especially when they are in distress. The burns and lesions generally occur at higher current levels or some other exacerbating factor (e.g. amount of salt in the solution). Can we trust people to be consistent throughout the course of the treatment? I don’t even know if we can trust most clinical environments to be that consistent.
Home-Based Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for the Treatment of Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Sham-Controlled Clinical Trial – Wow, I’d be way too chicken to do this one. It does lend evidence to the idea that cortical targets do not contribute significantly to the expression of depressive/anxious symptoms.
Interindividual differences in posterior fossa morphometry affect cerebellar tDCS-induced electric field strength – Every individual is different, and protocols should be taking this into account. Wondering, can we measure resistance between two points to get a rough idea of that difference and adjust current automagically? Especially since the resistance will change over the duration of any single treatment as well as the entire protocol? (If it doesn’t change, it’s an indication that tDCS is not modifying anything at all). I think this is the first work I’ve seen that directly supports a lot of the assumptions about the tDCS montage I posted in the past.
Short duration event related cerebellar TDCS enhances visuomotor adaptation – Whoa, okay I hadn’t even considered using tDCS like this. Interesting.
Modulating mental state recognition by anodal tDCS over the cerebellum – Hrm, is this “attention” or “Cerebellar Transform”?
Timing is everything: Event-related transcranial direct current stimulation improves motor adaptation – Interesting, more pulsed tDCS.
Weak DCS causes a relatively strong cumulative boost of synaptic plasticity with spaced learning – So now I’m wondering if the key to this is going to be inducing variation in tasks during stimulation. Maybe have the subject do a Piaget style physical/”mental” battery of tasks. There has to be a “stimulation limit”, beyond which we’re exceeding the physical ability of the involved cells to restructure (safely).
Challenges and opportunities of advanced gliomodulation technologies for excitation-inhibition balance of brain networks – YEAH. If we had the ability to do non-neuronal stimulation we’d be able to blow the doors off of a LOT of stuff!
Modulation of solute diffusivity in brain tissue as a novel mechanism of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) – This wraps around nicely with the first article in the thread.
A microfluidic perspective on conventional in vitro transcranial direct current stimulation methods – So, how important is it to measure the metals (sodium/calcium/potassium) when considering tDCS montage?